A novel household refrigerator with shape-stabilized PCM (Phase Change Material) heat storage condensers: An experimental investigation

In this study, a kind of shape-stabilized phase change material (PCM) was adopted for constructing heat storage condensers. And a novel household refrigerator equipped with the heat storage condensers was setup based on an ordinary double-door three-star compartment refrigerator. The experimental investigation on the characteristics of the novel refrigerator and an ordinary refrigerator was carried out under the ISO standard test conditions. For the novel refrigerator, part of the condensation heat was stored in the shape-stabilized PCM during the on-time and discharged to the environment while the compressor was off. Therefore, the heat dissipation of the novel refrigerator was continuous during a complete cycle (including a successive on-time and off-time period), different from the intermittent heat dissipation of the ordinary setup. Thus, the overall heat-transfer performances of the condensers could be significantly improved, which resulted in a lower condensation temperature, a higher evaporation temperature and a much larger subcooling degree at the condenser outlet. Compared to the ordinary refrigerator, the total cycle time and the ratio of on-time to the total cycle time of the novel refrigerator were much smaller, which led to more frequent starts of the compressor but lower energy consumption. Experiments demonstrated that the novel refrigerator could increase the energy efficiency by about 12% with only little increase of the cost.